With less than two months to go before the 2024 election, former President Donald Trump is reprising his lies about a “stolen” 2020 election that he used to instigate a violent attack on the US Capitol — the same strategy that tanked pro-Trump candidates in the 2022 midterms.
“No, I don’t acknowledge that at all,” the Republican presidential nominee said at Tuesday night’s debate against his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, when asked if he was finally admitting that he lost the White House race four years ago.
The coup-attempting former president also complained about the hundreds of prosecutions of his followers and the shooting death of one who tried to climb through a broken-out window into a hallway where House members were being evacuated.
“Ashli Babbitt was shot by an out-of-control police officer that should have never, ever shot her,” he said in a long, meandering answer to a moderator’s question. “It’s a disgrace, but we didn’t do — this group of people that have been treated so badly.”
Most Republican consultants and elected officials who support Trump have for years urged him to focus on what he intends to do to help Americans should he win back the White House, not on his grievances about having lost four years ago.
But Trump has only occasionally accepted that advice, returning again and again to his lies that Democrat Joe Biden cheated to beat him in 2020 and that he himself did nothing wrong leading up to and on Jan 6, 2021, even though he was impeached for his conduct and now faces two criminal indictments over it.
“It’s a misconception that Trump lacks message discipline,” said Amanda Carpenter, a former aide to Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz and now a researcher for the group United To Protect Democracy. “He’s been remarkably consistent over the past three years, repeating violent rhetoric that incited the mob and his promises to pardon insurrectionists.”
At the debate, asked if he had any regrets about his actions and inactions that day — Trump did not tell his mob of supporters to leave the Capitol for three hours, during which time they assaulted 140 law enforcement officers, with one officer dying within hours of being assaulted and four others dying by suicide over the following months — he repeated that he had done nothing wrong and then lied about the pre-coup-attempt rally that he himself had called.
“I had nothing to do with that other than they asked me to make a speech. I showed up for a speech,” he said.
Trump has said the same thing dozens of times at his campaign rallies, and has even stood and saluted in honour of his followers now serving prison sentences after attacking officers. One key difference is that his rallies are attended and watched on television primarily by his hard-core “Make America Great Again” supporters.
Tuesday night’s debate, in contrast, was likely watched by many tens of millions of Americans, including undecided voters in the half-dozen key states.
“We always say the more the American public hears from Donald Trump, the better for us, and his election denial language last night is a great example of why,” said Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign. “While he does the election denial on the trail for a MAGA audience all the time, last night actual undecided Americans saw him refuse to accept that he lost the 2020 election and defend J6 [Jan 6] insurrectionists, which is one of his worst polling positions.”
Harris herself cited Trump’s debate remarks about Jan. 6 in her plea to Americans, including non-Democrats, to support her for the sake of protecting the nation’s democracy. “If that was a bridge too far for you, well, there is a place in our campaign for you to stand for country, to stand for our democracy, to stand for rule of law and to end the chaos,” she said on the stage Tuesday night.
Whether Trump’s decision to continue embracing the violence surrounding his bid to cling to power — an effort that nearly got his own vice president killed by his mob — will move voters is unclear. That approach hurt a number of Trump-aligned candidates in 2022, but midterm elections historically have a more highly educated electorate than general elections — a demographic that has shifted even more toward Democrats since Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party in 2016.
“No impact. It’s baked in,” predicted Republican pollster Neil Newhouse.
“I don’t think talking about 2020 ever helps him. But does it hurt him?” said Republican consultant David Kochel. “Nothing moves anything over a point or so. This is going to come down to a few thousand voters in a handful of states. The days of big moves are over.”
Regardless of its effect on the election, Trump’s continued defence of Jan 6 is corrosive to American democracy, said Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police officer who defended the building that day from Trump’s mob.
“He plays to the smaller percentage of Americans who believe in his lies,” Dunn said. “That small percentage of people are the people who will feed into his lies and are the people who stormed the Capitol on his behalf. It’s not only lies he’s spreading, but it is dangerous.”
